Registration & Login
SurfCoast Shire eForum Participation Guide and Rules
Participants are responsible for reading and understanding these rules. By participating you agree to these rules.
Where did these rules come from? These participation rules are based on the rules developed by E-Demoracy.Org
Use your Real Name
If it is determined with careful consideration by the Moderator that a participant's actual identity is in question, that person will be suspended until proof of identity is provided. If it appears that fraud, forgery, identity theft, or computer crime laws have been violated, SurfCoast Shire will notify the appropriate legal authorities. Experience in other online discussion forums has shown that the use of real names rather than pseudonyms is more likely to result in a polite and respectful discussion. However, a you may have a valid reason for not wanting to use your real name. In this case, an exception can be made and the Moderator can approve the use of an alias.
Keep to the Topic
Keep topics within the eForum purpose.
Be Civil
This is a public forum with real people. Please respect people with differing views. No insults, name calling or inflamed speech. Personal one-on-one arguments, disagreements or personality conflicts are not appropriate on a public discussion forum. Attempts at humour or sarcasm should be labelled ... ;-), :-), etc. No Attacks or Threats - This keeps the eForum safe. If content is illegal it will not be displayed. Personal attacks or public threats against the safety or security of participants are not allowed. If you receive private communication from another participant that causes you serious concern, you may communicate that to the Moderator, but no action should be taken by the Moderator to intervene in private disputes among individuals. If you feel you have privately received an illegal threat via email, you should contact the appropriate legal authorities. SurfCoast Shire is not responsible for any private behaviour.
Privacy
Private stays private. Don't forward private replies without permission of the original author.
No Rumours
Avoid false rumours. Rumours of a personal nature are not allowed. Asking for clarification of what you've heard in the community can be appropriate if issues-based. You alone are responsible for what you post.
Right to Post and Reply
Sharing your knowledge and opinions with your fellow citizens is a democratic right. Only those who are registered eForum members may post. Any person or organisation that is publicly mentioned in an eForum post has a right to reply. In order to post a reply, the individual (or an individual representing the organisation) must become a registered member of the eForum.
Items Not Allowed in Forums
No attachments. Send any files you wish to share to the Moderator, who will store them in the files section if they are relevant to the discussion. Commercial advertising and chain letters are prohibited from the eForum. Email based posts must be plain text without file attachments. Comments or complaints about forum management or complaints about member rule violations must not be posted to the main forum. Instead, direct such messages privately to the Moderator. Public event promotions and links to commercial, media, or non-profit online content related to the scope of the eForum are appropriate. Participant "signatures" providing links to the work or projects of an individual are acceptable, but the display of specific products for sale are not allowed. SurfCoast Shire may acknowledge eForum sponsors in messages or on the web site.
Public Content and Use
You are sharing your content, but retain your copyright. By posting an original message, the message author agrees to allow SurfCoast Shire to distribute the message via email and the Internet and to include it in a publicly accessible online archive in perpetuity. While original message authors retain their personal copyright, they grant others the right to publicly quote portions of their message in any medium. Further, the full text of messages may be forwarded via email to others as long as the author's name and the eForum's name and web address are cited or linked. With copyrighted material like newspaper articles, you may post quotations from articles or web sites with the source URL. "Fair use" of excerpts (not the full text) is encouraged.
Warnings and Suspension
SurfCoast Shire eForum is moderated by Council officers. Moderators reserve the right not to publish postings that are deemed offensive, illegal or otherwise unsuitable. Should a posting to SurfCoast Shire eForum be deemed objectionable, the moderator will contact the author, explain the reasons and encourage the participant to revise the posting so that it is acceptable. You may lose your right to participate based on your behaviour in the eForum. You may also regain your rights. You may receive informal or official warnings from the Moderator if your postings violate the eForum rules. After two official warnings, you will be suspended from the eForum for the duration of the current topic discussion. You can register again for any of the following topics of discussion. Technical maintenance, full e-mail inboxes, or excessive bounced messages may cause a member to be temporarily or technically removed from the eForum or result in a delayed distribution of their posts. In these cases, the member may rejoin the forum at any time.
Moderator Responsibilities
Moderators shall behave in a manner that models good participation skills to other participants. The Moderator accepts, rejects or holds messages for posting. The moderator may propose message changes by email to a registered member to conform to the participation guide and rules. The Moderator will respect your privacy. Any personal information given to SurfCoast Council for your subscription to SurfCoast Shire eForum will be used only for the purpose for which it was intended. Should these rules be amended, the Moderator will announce the changes in the eForum.
eForum Sponsor and Publisher
SurfCoast Shire as the sponsor and publisher of SurfCoast Shire eForum is legally liable for its content. To minimise the possibility of legal litigation, Moderators screen postings prior to publication. Postings are screened to ensure that the participation rules are respected. Postings are not screened to prohibit different views from those of Council.
Please provide feedback to the moderator.
To create an account you will need to visit the Registration page and complete the form for creating a new account. Here you will specify details such as your login name and email address – depending upon how SurfCoast Shire eForum is configured you may also be asked to specify a password. If you are not asked to specify a password, one will be emailed to you after successfully registering.
After successfully registering you should have a username and password. You can then visit the login page and enter your username and password to login.
When logging in if you do not check the ‘Remember Me’ option you will be automatically logged off after an administrator-defined length of inactivity, usually 20 minutes. If you would like the site to always log you in automatically, please check the ‘Remember Me’ checkbox.
If you forgot your username and/or password you can visit the Forget Your Password page and have both your username and a new password emailed to you by entering the email account you're registered with. You will be sent a new password since we store your password encrypted and have no way of retrieving the original value. Once you receive your username and new password you can login and change your password.
If you’ve registered and can’t login, check to ensure you have a valid username and password. If you are sure the username and password are valid, but still can’t login you may either require account activation or your account may be on hold. In this case it is best to contact the board administrator(s) or moderator(s).
First check to ensure your username and password are correct. If you still can’t login your account has either been put on hold or deleted due to inactivity. Please contact the board administrator(s) or moderator(s).
User Profile & Settings
A profile is information about your account that controls how you view information within SurfCoast Shire eForum. This includes details about posts you’ve contributed to, personal information you wish to share such as your web address or weblog address, as well as setting that control how you interact with this SurfCoast Shire eForum site such as: themes, time zone, and many other settings.
Setting your timezone will enable SurfCoast Shire eForum to display all dates and time relative to your time zone.
A signature is a message that is appended to the end of any posts you make in the forums. You can edit your signature from the profile page. This signature will then appear at the bottom of any messages posted by you.
An avatar is a feature of the forums which allows for an image to be displayed along with your posts. Avatars may be enabled or disabled by your administrator.
If avatars are enabled by the administrator you will see and avatar section when viewing your profile. From here you can complete the forum to name the avatar you wish to use, either uploading an avatar or specifying a URL to your avatar. You will also need to enable your avatar for it to be displayed with your posts.
SurfCoast Shire eForum is designed to be multi-language friendly. Currently the only available language is English, but additional language packs can be installed to add support for other languages. Check http://www.communityserver.org for language packs. Within your profile you will see a listing of the available languages.
The date format used to display any date information can be configured from your profile.
Email tracking is a feature which will send emails to you when messages that you are subscribed to change. You can turn off all email tracking globally from your profile.
There are many different icons that can show up next to usernames in the forums. Common examples are administrators, moderators, or top posters. Other images may be displayed based on groups the user belongs to.
Depending upon how the administrator has configured the site you may be required to be logged in before viewing/using these areas. This is primarily to protect the privacy of users who have shared their information or to prevent unwanted/unsolicited emails.
Privacy & Security
Once logged in you can change your password from your Profile page.
Unless the administrator has configured the site to allow username changes you cannot change you username. Otherwise you can change your username from the Profile page.
Once logged in, you can change your private email address from your Profile page.
The only profile setting that is required is your private email address. This is the email address that is used when you subscribe to the forums, when a forgotten username/password is emailed. The private email address is never shared or displayed publicly. If you wish to share an email address publicly, use the public email address field. The remainder of the profile settings is optional.
You can set the option in your profile and your name will not appear in any member listings, including the listing of who is online.
Navigation
A Forum Group is a top level grouping of related forums. A forum group contains 1 or more forums.
A Forum is a grouping of related threads of discussion. A Forum contains 0 or more threads and 0 or more sub-forums.
A Thread is a grouping of related posts. A Thread contains 1 or more Posts. The first post becomes the Thread and replies to the original post increment details on the Thread, such as the reply count or last post.
|
Thread Icon Legend
|
|
Topic with posts you have not read.
|
|
Topic with posts you have read.
|
|
Popular topic with posts you have not read. A topic
becomes popular after a certain number of views and posts (administrator
defined).
|
|
Popular topic with posts you have read. A topic becomes
popular after a certain number of views and posts (administrator
defined).
|
|
Announcement you have not read
|
|
Announcement you have read
|
|
A pinned topic with posts you have not read. Pinned topics are
displayed before other topics until they become unpinned.
|
|
A pinned topic with posts you have read. Pinned topics are displayed
before other topics until they become unpinned.
|
|
A pinned popular topic with posts you have not read. A pinned topic
with enough views or replies to become popular.
|
|
A pinned popular topic with posts you have read. A pinned topic with
enough views or replies to become popular.
|
|
A locked topic with posts you have not read. Locked topics do not
allow replies.
|
|
A locked topic with posts you have read. Locked topics do not allow
replies.
|
A forum may not display any threads if there are no threads in the forum or if filters on the forms have been applied and no threads match the filter. An example of a filter is filtering to display threads newer than a certain date, such as threads new in the past 2 weeks.
A forum may or may not be moderated depending upon how the forum has been configured. After posting a message in a moderated forum you may receive a message stating that the post is awaiting moderation. Once the moderator(s) approve your post you post will become visible. The moderators may choose to move, edit, or delete your post to ensure that the post is topical to the current forum.
The icons next to threads when viewing a forum indicate different status. You can move your mouse cursor over these icons to see what the different status / types of threads are.
An announcement is a special post type that is always displayed at the top of a forum for a configured amount of time. The purpose of an announcement is to increase the visibility of certain topics.
A sticky topic is a special post that causes a post to sort to the top of a forum for a specified amount of time. A sticky topic is similar to an announcement, whereas an announcement is displayed separate from other threads and usually does not allow replies.
A locked thread is a special post that does not allow replies. Once a user locks a post or an administrator/moderator locks a thread no more posts are allowed.
Yes, you can sort threads when viewing a forum by Author, Replies, Views, and Last Post. The default sort for a forum is to display the newest threads first (Last Post descending). To sort simply click on the options button at the bottom of the screen and select your desired sort order and click 'Apply'.
The XML icon is linked to the RSS feed for the forum. RSS is used to allow other applications to subscribe to a forum's posts.
This icon indicates the user’s online status. A green icon means the user has been active recently (usually within the last 15 minutes). A red icon means the user has not recently been active. You can hover your mouse over this icon to see details about the user’s past activity.
If you are attempting to access a forum that you have visited before, but now receive an ‘unknown forum’ error there are two likely causes. The first cause is that the forum you are attempting to access is private and you are not signed in. The second cause is that the forum has been removed.
Posting
Yes and no. You cannot type HTML directly into the editor. If you are using Internet Explorer the default editor for creating new posts will be a Rich Text Editor that will automatically format posts using HTML. If you post with a browser other than Internet Explorer a standard HTML textbox is used and BBCode can be used to mark-up posts.
BBCode is a special syntax for formatting plaintext posts.
Yes, however, this requires the moderator(s) or administrator(s) to enable this permission for user’s on a forum-by-forum basis.
Emoticons are graphical elements that can be added within the body of a post to add emotions to the post. Common examples are the use of smilies within the contents of a post. SurfCoast Shire eForum comes with a pre-defined set of emoticons, however the administrator can add additional ones.
You can post a new message to a forum in several ways depending upon how the administrator has configured the site. When viewing a forum you should see an image button reading New Topic. Clicking on this image button will take you to a form for posting a message or ask you to login first. Depending upon how the administrator has configured the site you may be able to post anonymously, i.e. no login required. If you do not see the New Topic image button you may not have enough permissions – even after logging in – to post a message to the forum even though you are allowed to view the forum.
You can reply to an existing post using either the Reply or Quote image buttons displayed with the post. If you do not see the Reply or Quote image buttons when viewing a post you either do not have permissions to reply or the post may not allow replies.
If the administrator or moderator has configured the forum or your role to allow editing of posts you will see an Edit image button next to posts you have made. Clicking on this image button will allow you to edit your post.
If the administrator or moderator has configured the forum or your role to allow deleting posts you will see a Delete image button next to new posts you have made. If a post you have made has one or more replies you will no longer be able to delete the post.
The administrator may have specified a word filter for posts. When word filters are enabled certain words that are deemed to be offensive are filtered and replaced with the ‘*’ character.
See How do I add Signature to my Post? in the User Profile and Settings section.
See What is an avatar? And How do I Set my Avatar in the User Profile and Settings section.
User Groups & Permissions
Permissions control what you are or are not allowed to do while browsing the site. The permissions you are granted control all aspects of your view within SurfCoast Shire eForum.
An administrator is the highest permission level within SurfCoast Shire eForum. By default, an administrator has full permissions to perform any action, e.g. moderating posts, approving users, and so on.
A moderator is the second highest permission level within SurfCoast Shire eForum. By default a moderator can perform any number of tasks within a particular forum or set of forums. This includes approving posts, moving posts, deleting posts, editing posts, or banning users. If you have a problem with a particular forum the best place to start is with a moderator. Moderators belong to varying groups configured by the Administrator.
A user group, also known as a role, is grouping of common users for the purpose of assigning permissions. In addition to common permission assignment a role can also be used to display an image for a user in that role. Roles make the job of administering and moderating the site easier since users can be assigned to roles and then permission applied based on those roles.
Users are assigned to user groups by the administrator. If there is a particular group you wish to join, please send a private message or email to one of its members for more information.
Private Messages
A private message is like email within SurfCoast Shire eForum. You can send a private message to other users within this SurfCoast Shire eForum site that is visible only to them. No private information, such as the user's email address, is ever disclosed.